A suspect process: In police lineups, eyewitness testimony is usually faulty

A SUSPECT PROCESS:In a recent case, DNA analysis wasn't wrong, but witness was. How HPD can reform its lineups.

MICHOL O'CONNOR, Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

Published 5:30 am, Sunday, October 28, 2007

On Tuesday, Oct. 9, a Houston Chronicle headline on a Page One article read: "Something needs to be done." The day before, Ronald Taylor, who had just been released after spending 14 years in prison for a sexual assault he did not commit, appeared before City Council to ask that something be done for other wrongfully convicted people in prison. The response of city officials seemed to consider Taylor's wrongful conviction as another example of the problems with the Houston Police Department crime lab. Addressing the problems at the crime lab has been a long and expensive process.

What gets lost in the discussion of Taylor's case is that his conviction was not based on a mistaken analysis of DNA evidence by the HPD crime lab. Taylor was convicted based on mistaken eyewitness testimony of the victim. The only role DNA played in his case is that the Innocence Project found DNA evidence that exonerated Taylor that the HPD crime lab overlooked or ignored.

Taylor's exoneration is similar to other people whose convictions have been overturned by DNA evidence: Seventy-five percent of wrongful convictions result from faulty eyewitness identifications. This is a problem City Council can solve for future cases prosecuted here.

Repeated studies have shown that the traditional lineup procedures produce mistaken identifications. Despite this, HPD continues to use those very same procedures: live and photo lineups, usually conducted by one of the officers involved in the investigation or the arrest of the suspect.

The Innocence Project endorses reforms of the lineup procedures that have been developed to counter the problems with eyewitness lineup identifications. City Council should force HPD to adopt these procedures:

• Blind administration: The police officer administering the lineup (photo or live) should not be told which person in the lineup is the suspect. This procedure sharply reduces the risk of misidentification by witnesses. When the officer knows the identity of the suspect, the officer may inadvertently give the witness subtle or not-so-subtle indications to the witness to pick the suspect.

• Lineup composition: The persons in the lineup must resemble the eyewitness' description of the perpetrator. For example, the suspect should not be the only member of in the lineup with facial hair.

• Sequential lineups: The persons in the lineup should be presented to the witness one-by-one (sequential), not all at once (simultaneous), as is presently done. A sequential lineup reduces the chance the witnesses will identify an innocent persons as the perpetrator. When witnesses view several people at once (for example, a card with six photos), witnesses tend to choose the person who looks the most like but may not actually be the suspect.

• Single view: Witnesses should never be shown separate lineups with the same suspect's photograph, or shown a sequential lineup with more than one photograph of the suspect in the same lineup. When a suspect's photo is included in two separate lineups, or is included more than once in the same lineup, the witness begins to see the suspect as familiar and is more likely to identify the suspect as the perpetrator.

• Instructions: The witnesses viewing a lineup should be told the suspect may not be in the lineup and that the investigation will continue regardless of the lineup result.

• Confidence statements: Immediately after the lineup, the lineup witnesses should provide a statement, in their own words, articulating their level of confidence in the identification.

• Recording: The identification procedures should be videotaped whenever possible. This protects innocent suspects from any misconduct by the officer conducting the lineup, and helps the prosecution by showing a jury that the procedure was legitimate.

City leaders should be weary of making apologies to innocent people who were convicted of crimes they did not commit. By requiring HPD to reform its lineup procedures, the city can reduce the risk of wrongful convictions without spending millions of dollars. The Chronicle headline was right: Something needs to be done. Now.